The Martian

This chapter returns to Watney’s mission logs, and from now on, throughout the novel, the point of view will switch between the epistolary mission log and more conventional third-person narrative. While Earth has discovered Watney is alive and are working to contact him, Watney has no idea this is happening. He is making steady progress, and life is relatively stable on Mars as he harvests his first potato crop. As with his first planting, he cuts the potatoes into chunks and replants them for a second, larger harvest.

He is also still working on his other priority: to gain communication with NASA. His plan involves getting to the Ares 4 MAV, which has already been sent to Mars in anticipation of the next mission and is located 3,200 kilometers away. This plan presents several other problems: how to live in the rover as he’s traveling; how to charge the rover as he’s traveling; and how to provide himself heat, water, and oxygen during the trip. He begins making modifications to the rover and takes several short drives to test his system. In addition, to heat the rover, he decides to dig up and use the extremely dangerous radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) as a heat source. This is a plutonium heat source that was used by the mission and then buried on Mars because it is so dangerous. He successfully excavates the RTG and puts it in the rover. He prepares for his longest test drive, lasting 20 days.

Back on Earth, NASA tracks Watney’s movements, day by day, by watching the changes in positioning of the rover and other equipment. Mindy Park has been given oversight of the pertinent Mars satellites to make sure that they can have near continuous coverage.

During a meeting with Teddy, Venkat, Annie Montrose, Mitch Henderson (flight director for Ares 3), Bruce Ng (director of JPL), and Mindy, it is decided not to tell the Hermes crew that Watney is alive. The reasoning is that the crew still have a mission to do, and knowing that they left Watney stranded on Mars is worse than believing him dead; for the crew to work effectively, they can’t learn of Watney’s survival. Mitch is strongly against this, but he is overruled. In addition, after discussion with Bruce, they decide to change their plan for the Ares 4 supply probe: They will send it early, with supplies to feed Watney until the Ares 4 mission arrives on Mars.

Venkat and Mindy, meanwhile, have been following Watney via satellite. Seeing him making his test drives and setting off on his longest drive, they work out that he is going to Pathfinder, an American robotic spacecraft that landed on Mars years ago. They discern that his goal may be to attempt to use the radio to contact NASA. Venkat contacts Bruce at JPL and asks him to gather the people who worked on the Pathfinder to assess the situation and decide how to communicate with Watney.

In a short section, Dr. Irene Shields appears on CNN to talk about Watney. She is the flight psychologist for the Ares missions, and she discusses Watney’s character, saying that he is good-natured, cheerful, resourceful, and a good problem solver, but she points out that they don’t know his state of mind.

It is sol 83, and Watney, still unaware of all this activity on Earth, is on the road to Pathfinder. The trip is going well, but he has no map or way to navigate. There are no landmarks to follow, and he cannot make a compass, because Mars has no magnetic field. So, he resorts to navigating by the stars. Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons, runs from west to east twice per day, and so he uses it to locate himself. The drive continues to be unremarkable, but once he gets close enough to Pathfinder, he does find a landmark he can use to locate himself. It is a small crater, on his map but unnamed, so he names it the Lighthouse of Alexandria. He finds Pathfinder, and with it, Sojourner, Pathfinder’s robotic rover. Both are intact. He is able to remove what he needs for communications from the Pathfinder lander and takes Sojourner with him for parts. At the chapter’s close, he has successfully loaded everything he needs onto his rover and will start back to the Ares 3 Hab the next day.

For most of the trip back to the Hab, he is able to follow his own tracks due to clear weather. When he gets to the point where his tracks have been swept away by the wind, he resorts back to navigation by Phobos. During the trip, as a side project, he has been taking rock and soil samples whenever he does an EVA. It is not a part of his mission as the crew botanist, but he does it for the science and because he finds it fun and relaxing. While he enjoys himself, he also can’t rule out the fact that some other mission, someday, might be able to collect and use his data. During his charging breaks and at night, he watches Million Dollar Man from Lewis’s data stick and notes the episode’s thorough scientific accuracy.

When he finally returns to the Hab after being gone for three weeks, everything is still operational, and the potatoes are still growing. He begins the process of fixing the Sojourner rover and charging the Pathfinder. He reflects on the fact that even if he does get Pathfinder to start up, nobody who worked on Pathfinder at JPL will be listening (of course, he is wrong about this). The chapter closes with an independent entry from the Pathfinder Log Sol 0, indicating that it has charged up and is broadcasting, trying to connect with Earth—and at the very end, that a signal has been acquired.